All's Fair in Love and Hate
by FFHannibal
Summary: James is devastated when his continuous attempts to ask Lily for a date keep failing. Will Remus and Sirius manage to cheer him up?


Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any other characters you might recognize, they belong to J.K. Rowling.

This was written for the 'Emotion challenge' from youcanreachthestars. It's the first challenge I've ever done and I hope it's a bit decent. The emotions here are hate and worry, the pairing is Lily/James. It's a pairing, that I think, is done many times. Where they end up either dating or not yet dating. I actually like the pairing a lot and I tried to give my own twist to their rather turbulant love story. So I hope you enjoy reading it.

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BANG!

The portrait hole to the Gryffindor common room slammed shut with a bang. The culprit you ask: James Potter.

Yes, the usual so cheery and confident young man had slammed. the portrait. with a bang.

Why do you ask: for the umpteenth time this week he had been yelled at by Lily Evans, the most beautiful girl in the entire school. At least that was what he thought, but actually everyone had to admit that that girl with the bright red hair and the beautiful, deep emerald eyes looked pretty good.

And if it wasn't for his best friend fancying her, Sirius Black would've definitly taken a shot. But now was not the time to think about that. His best friend was clearly mad about something and he was determined to find out about what.

So after James had ran upstairs to their dorm, he gave the entire common room a dead glare that clearly said that they had to mind their own business and staggered after James up the stairs.

To his relief, he saw Remus sitting on his bed when he opened the door. To be honest, Remus was a lot better at this comforting stuff than Sirius was. Although Remus had his 'furry little problem', he was a calm and smart young man and, to Sirius' amazement, found almost always the right words to say.

Little did he know that they were going to need a lot more than just some wise words of Remus.

He walked further in and closed the door. James was anxiously pacing the dorm and seemed to have no intention to stop soon.

Sirius went over to his bed and looked at Remus who hadn't said a word and was still reading in an extrimely boring book, at least that's what Sirius thought.

He sighed, he just hoped that Remus would join in soon and say something, but that clearly wasn't going to happen anytime soon. So it was up to Sirius, the only person in the world who could make this situation worse than it already was, to talk to James.

"Prongs, mate, what's wrong?", he asked, trying to sound casual and not careless at the same time.

Sirius got no answer, James just kept pacing around with a furious look on his face.

He sighed again, "Come on James, what happened, it can't be that bad?" Unconsiously he hadn't used James' nickname and although it wasn't that unusual it did draw James' attention.

"Yes your right Sirius."

Sirius was delighted to hear that for once his best friend thought he was right.

"It isn't bad you know," James continued, "It's HORRIBLE!"

Sirius' smile fell. This wasn't entirely what he had expected, James usually didn't stay mad long, he would just start talking about quidditch and forget he was mad in the first place. But he had a hunch that it would be a lot more difficult to get him to calm down this time.

"I'm sure you're just a little bit overreacting here Prongs," Sirius tried.

"Wait, what!", James had stopped pacing and turned to Sirius.

Sirius gulped, "Eh, ..., nothing, Prongs, nothing."

"James, just calm down a bit and tell us what happened."

Finally, Remus decided to join. Sirius breathed out, he was sure James would've jumped on him if Remus decided to wait another minute to say something.

James turned to Remus, "I'm sorry Moony, but it's just so horrible."

Moony closed his book and laid it carefully in his trunk. For some odd reason, he was always very careful with any sort of study material.

"Moony, for Gods sake, it's just a book, throw it in the trunk it's not going to get hurt!"

Remus glared at Sirius before he turned to James, "I'm not denying any of your feelings, I know you probably feel really bad now, but the least you can do is explain and calm down, Prongs."

"Well, ...," James started while walking over to his bed. "it's just, ..., you know I like Lily."

"No serious? You like Lily? I hadn't even noticed?", as usual Sirius just had to be sarcastic and even more usual was the way he cowered under Remus' fierce glare.

But luckily James hadn't heard, or at least pretended he hadn't heard. He probably was already thinking about Lily again. About her shiny red hair and her beautiful, green and adorable eyes.

James let out a heavy sigh, "Well, I was thinking, ..."

Remus again casted a glare in Sirius direction, daring him to make a sarcastic remark.

"Maybe I should leave her alone."

This made Sirius and Remus freeze in place. There best friend, James, bloody, Potter, was considering giving up. Two words they never even thought James capable of using and here he was, almost literally admitting his defeat.

"Prongs, you can't be serious." Sirius said, with a lot of worry in his tone and actually all over his face. "You love her!"

James said nothing, he just sat there. This was definitly one of the hardest, if not the hardest task the Marauders (or rather Remus and Sirius) had to do. How on Earth were they going to convince James he was wrong? Once he had set his mind to something it took almost everything to make him change it.

"JAMES CHARLUS POTTER!", Sirius awoke from his frozen state, if he'd expected anything at all, he clearly didn't expect Remus yelling like that. He usually managed to keep his cool, but now he looked like he was really mad. "You will not doubt yourself, understood?"

James didn't look up, he just kept sulking. He really looked defeated. That was so unlike him, he didn't even look defeated when he lost a game of wizarding chess or a quidditch match, although he looked quite angry, he never ever looked defeated.

Remus and Sirius looked at each other, they seriously didn't know what to do. They never saw James like this before, especially not over Lily. He usually got angry and tense, because he once again didn't succeed in asking her for a date.

"I just don't know what to do anymore," came suddenly James' voice. "She hates me."

Sirius sighed, "She doesn't hate you Prongs. She just thinks you're annoying and to be honest, I would get quite fed up too if there was this stubborn kid asking me out again and again and again and -"

"You didn't saw her, in the great hall. You didn't saw her yelling at me she hated me and that I had to leave her and her friends alone. You didn't saw the hate in her eyes."

"Let me guess," Remus intervened, "right before she entered the great hall, you hexed Snape almost into oblivion and when she said 'me and my friends' she probably ment him. Am I right?"

James didn't need to say anything to confirm Remus' suspicion, his face said enough.

Suddenly Sirius started to laugh histerically. He fell over and rolled around on the ground, whilst Remus looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "Padfoot, what in Merlin's name are you laughing at?"

" ... James ..., ... you ... really ... need ... to stop ... worrying," Sirus managed to get out between breaths.

James thought for a moment, 'Yeah, I guess you're right Paddy."

"So Remus, Sirius." They both looked at him. "You're still in for a prank on our dear Snivellus?"

Padfoot and Moony both looked at him as if they never saw him. James could be really weird sometimes, they just hoped that he would never reproduce or at least reproduce with someone who was the complete opposite of him, 'cause they didn't think they could handle another James.

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So, I hope you enjoyed it.

I know the emotions are only mentioned or expressed very briefly, but I tried my very best and I enjoyed writing it. Feel free to review, criticism is always welcomed, but keep it polite, please! I find it very hard to write dialogues, so feel free to give me advice on how to improve it. There are probably some grammar errors and spelling errors in it, but remember Enlgish is not my first language and I tried my very best to write it.

So, thanks for reading my story!


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